As Mark highlights, the Home Office has a track record of returning to the scene of its civil liberties crimes. Joanthan Calder made this point strongly over at his Liberal England blog a couple of weeks ago: Lib Dem snooper’s charter victory is great, but we must be vigilant: “… the danger has not gone away. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and all that.”

And of course Lib Dems have within our own ranks — in the person of Lord (Alex) Carlile — one of the most avid agitators for new powers to be given to the authorities (aka protecting our freedoms by giving them up). Here he is on the BBC’s Daily Politics again making his familiar case for the erosion of civil liberties in the name of the greater good.